


the wood soaked in their blood / their hands join in the mud

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: Angst, Ghosts, M/M, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 10:56:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7615318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no happy endings for highway ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the wood soaked in their blood / their hands join in the mud

**Author's Note:**

> no one that knows me is at all surprised by this. sorry it's so sad!! thanks to molly for betaing. title is lyrics from devotion by tristam.  
> enjoy!! xoxo

The road disappears under his tires with a hum Porter can’t summon any interest in.

It’s late, late enough that the forests bordering the roads are turning more silhouette than detail. Porter clings to the steering wheel, eyes the pavement with the bleary exhaustion. There’s no such thing as traffic on this road at this hour.

The radio is on but the volume is so far down that the voices are an indistinct murmur, just on the edge of hearing. It’s almost soothing.

Porter sighs and shakes his head once. He shouldn’t be out this late but he’d just been so caught up in the studio and by the time he’d looked up it was midnight and he was two hours over his time slot. Now it’s just past one and he’s maybe ten minutes from home, overcaffeinated and overtired and buzzing muzzily under his skin.

He doesn’t notice the figure under the streetlight, arm extended with its thumb in the air, until he’s level with it. He pulls to a stop a little too fast, his brakes groaning quietly. For a moment he almost hasn’t processed _why_ he’d stopped but then the figure is hesitantly stepping up to the window.

He’s silvered in the moonlight, bleached of depth or detail, but Porter can make out that he’s about his age. Big nose, a pretty mouth, and Porter tears his eyes away with practiced ease. He’s scruffy, a little tired-looking, but clean. Wearing a hoodie and jeans that don’t look new but aren’t dirty either, a backpack over one shoulder. His expression is a little sad, a little hard to make out in the stark shadows.

Porter rolls down the window.

“Hey, I’m Mat.” Mat’s voice is hoarse, a little whispery, a thread of an accent Porter thinks might be British. He doesn’t know. “I’m heading to Chapel Hill, if it’s not out of your way.”

Porter stares at him for a long moment.

He’s tired. He’s so tired he’s on the other side of tired, a floating dreamy place where nothing seems real and everything’s too sharp out of the corners of his eyes. There’s nothing about Mat that screams danger, even so far out on the highway all alone.

“Get in,” Porter says at last. “Where in Chapel Hill?”

Mat moves around the car to the passenger side, climbs in with a certain stiff guardedness that’s almost reassuring to Porter. He’s still jittering but it’s giving way to soft tiredness. He wants bed, but he’s already committed to another ten minutes out of his way to take Mat to a street that Mat tells him is near his house.

Mat’s quiet while Porter starts the car, settling his backpack between his feet with a look at Porter that’s probably a little less covert than he’d thought it was. In the dim shadows inside the car his face isn’t much easier to see but the expression Porter can make out is as tired and sad as before.

He’s handsome in some unconventional way.

Porter puts the car in drive and pulls back out onto the road.

It’s quiet again, the noise of the radio and two sets of breathing. For a mile or so neither of them says a word. The sun has set entirely and the moon hasn’t risen enough to see yet and the lane of the trees and the highway is dark.

“What are you doing out so late?” Porter asks at last.

Mat’s staring out the window when Porter glances over. There’s a streetlight passing on his other side and his eyes are shadowed, indecipherable. His expression is still exhaustedly melancholy.

“Trying to get home,” Mat says at last. His voice hasn’t gotten any stronger, still whispery and thin and oddly accented. “There was a party and…”

He trails off and shrugs, a resigned motion Porter catches out of the corner of his eye.

“What about you?” Mat asks and his voice is a little bit stronger, a little more animated.

Porter smiles.

“I was in the studio,” he says. “I make music.”

Mat’s turned to look at him when Porter glances over again and this time Porter can see him better than ever. He still looks tired but something of the melancholy has lifted. He’s looking with interest and it’s surprisingly nice to be listened to like this, by a stranger in the dim beginning of the morning, the soft rumble of the engine and the whisper of the radio.

“You should tell me about that,” Mat says in his gritty, quiet voice and Porter does.

He talks for the whole drive up to Chapel Hill, barely interrupted by Mat’s brief questions or comments on Porter’s faltering explanation of his concept. He’s still in the early stages of writing, he knows, he’s got a vision and some basic ideas and not a lot else. But Mat seems to get what he’s trying to convey in stilted words and abrupt gestures, or that’s what Porte thinks he’s seeing in brief glances at the dark glitter of Mat’s eyes on his face.

Mat doesn’t look away much, not at all really until they hit Chapel Hill and he starts interjecting quiet directions. Porter follows them without thinking about it too much.

“It’s coming up soon,” Mat says and Porter nods, flashes a quick smile and wonders distractedly if it’d be bad if he asked for Mat’s number. This is the best he’s felt, the _clearest_ in months now.

Silence lapses for a little while. It doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Porter watches the pools of light being eaten up under his tires and considers.

He turns off of a brightly lit commercial road and into a little block of houses, older but well kept. He’ll do it, he decides, he’ll ask Mat for his number or if he wants to hang out sometime. If maybe he’d want to stop by the studio sometime maybe just to hear the bones of his ideas. It feels a little giddy, a little bit of a nauseous flutter in his gut.

He turns to ask and the car is empty.

For a moment he just stares at the empty seat, the cluttered footwell where Mat’s bag had been. The upholstery’s a little dusty and there’s a crumpled receipt in the seam and Porter can’t remember if it’s always been there. He blinks and then ducks to peer out the windows at the dark neighborhood.

The shadows are heavy and opaque, a few of the streetlights are flickering or out entirely. No one’s awake or if they are there aren’t any lights in any of the window. Porter isn’t sure how Mat had opened the door without him noticing or why he’d ducked out of a moving vehicle, even if he had been going slowly, but eventually he shrugs and starts the car again.

He’d thought Mat had liked him or- he shakes that thought away.

The drive home is long and quieter than it’d seemed before.

\--

The next day the studio owner laughs at his stumbling apologies and shrugs him away, tells him as long as he locks up and he isn’t interrupting and he pays on time he can stay late like that sometimes. Porter laughs, rubs the back of his neck. He’s already a thousand miles away, the phantom of plastic keys under his fingers.

The studio chair accepts him in and then he’s gone, everything’s fading but the music and the instruments under his fingertips.

\--

It’s dark again when he looks up and he glances at his phone.

It’s almost dead but it tells him it’s even later than it had been the night before. It’s almost two and he can feel it dragging on him heavily when he pauses for breath. His mouth tastes a little bad and when he lifts his arms above his head his joints pop painfully.

There’s a song taking shape.

He climbs into his car and considers just falling asleep in the parking lot but then his back twinges and he sighs, throws the car into reverse and pulls out into the street sloppily. It’s a longer drive home than he likes but he’ll sleep better in a bed.

There’s no one standing under the streetlights of the highway. The little silver circles are empty, throwing the shadows of weeds and sidewalks in stark relief.

\--

The next day he wakes up and eats breakfast and it’s alright, his brothers yelling to each other, dogs barking. His mom asks him how the music’s going and when he shrugs and nods she smiles vaguely and turns to right a stack of mail on the counter.

He misses Mat suddenly, a petulant sort of anger. Misses the way he’d listened, the way he’d _understood_.

His mom doesn’t look up when he wanders out the door. One of his brother’s shouts after him and he lifts an arm in answer and doesn’t look back.

The car smells like spilled coffee and febreeze and he heads for the closest Starbucks. It’s in Chapel Hill.

\--

The studio is bad.

It’s like pushing through water or honey and he’s not moving as fast as he’d hoped, everything a little distorted when he tries to get it down on paper. It’s _frustrating_ and he almost scraps the whole file twice, has to go out to stand on the step in the fresh air for a while. The sun is setting and when he looks at the time he’s only got a little while left.

He goes back, settles into his chair and lays his hands on the keyboard and plays.

When he looks up again it’s late and he’s so used to it now he doesn’t even hurry to pack up.

He’d done well, right at the end. There’s most of a song, all there but the fine-tuning. Enough that when he throws his shit into the trunk of the car and slams it shut it’s a satisfying noise.

He’s getting acquainted with the depth of the sky right at midnight, spends a moment standing by the car door and staring up.

He’s not sure how much time he wastes that way. It’s all warm and close and slipping past at a deceptive rate. He thinks it’s probably a few minutes; when he slips into the car and glances at the clock it’s closer to one in the morning that he can really account for.

He starts the car anyways, throws it into drive and takes the turn onto the highway that’s getting familiar now.

His song’s running through his head and it’s not perfect but it’s blending with the sound of his tires and his exhaustion and he leaves the radio off. Some of his best thinking happens alone and in the dark and he needs it. He needs to get this _right_.

There’s a figure standing in one of the circles of light and Porter’s slowing to a stop with a sense of inevitability that should probably worry him in some way.

He rolls his window down and smiles at Mat.

“Hey, need a ride?” he asks and Mat smiles back hesitantly.

He’s got the same backpack, settles into place with the same animal wariness. He still looks so tired but he smiles back when Porter does and relaxes a little when Porter throws the car into drive.

“Another party?” Porter asks, cheerful.

Mat shrugs. Shuffles his grip on the backpack. The zipper rattles a little bit.

“Same party,” Mat says. “I just need to get home.”

“Cool,” Porter says after a moment and silence falls again and Porter wonders. Wonders what it means. He decides he probably doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want to know what Mat really means. His tone had been exhausted, a kind of bone-deep weariness that Porter can feel pressing on his shoulders, a sudden foreign weight.

“How was the studio?” Mat asks and Porter starts talking and it’s like before, the rush of words and honesty and it still feels the same way. It feels good. It feels like Mat _gets it_.

“What about you?” Porter asks just before the turn that'll take him into Chapel Hill. “You do music?”

Mat's nodding when Porter glances over, shaggy hair falling in his face. He's finally let go of his bag, hands loose in his lap, long-fingered. He looks something perilously close to relaxed.

“I've been in a few bands,” he says.

“Anything I've heard of?” Porter asks like he knows anything about the local scene. He just wants to keep Mat talking, wants to hear about his music.

“Probably not,” Mat says and shrugs. “It's been... a while.”

Porter nods and quiet lapses again. His hands turn the wheel onto familiar streets, bright backlit signs for business closed hours ago. They’ll be to the neighborhood Mat had told him about last time soon.

“You should come into the studio sometime,” Porter says impulsively. “We could work on something.”

He wants to have Mat in the studio with him. He wants to show Mat his music, he wants to _make something_ with him. He wants to know more about him, about his music, his life. He wants to know everything. He wants Mat to know everything about him.

“You don't even know what I play,” Mat says. He sounds amused and when Porter glances over again there's a little smile tucked into the corner of his mouth.

“Still,” Porter says.

The smile’s gotten bigger when Porter looks over again, wan and small and still so bright. Porter’s stomach flips over and he tightens his hands on the wheel, tears his eyes away to focus on dark asphalt, shining highway borders. His face feels hot.

“I’d like that,” Mat says softly and his voice is a thread of warmth, barely audible.

Silence falls again as they roll into that same old, dark neighborhood. It’s even quieter, the radio isn’t on this time.

Porter looks over and he’s almost not surprised to find the seat empty.

The street beyond is dark and deserted and a little thrill of nerves runs up Porter’s spine. It doesn’t seem like a dangerous neighborhood but he doesn’t know, doesn’t know where Mat _went_ , doesn’t understand anything at all. His passenger seat seems so empty it’s sucking in his eyes.

He reaches out to feel the worn upholstery and it’s cool to the touch.

\--

The next day he has no studio time scheduled. He’d thought he’d need the break but there’s something under his skin that’s itching to just get it _done_ , to make the music. He’s got so many ideas and his laptop just isn’t cutting but he’s making do anyways, pecking his way through Ableton with his scuffed USB keyboard.

There’s something else making him antsy, making him reach for his coffee mug with agitated frequency.

He doesn’t know what to think about Mat.

He’d searched every spelling of ‘Mat’ he could think of in combination with Chapel Hill and come up with too many results to sift through. No one that looks like Mat. No one that even looks like they could be _related_ to Mat, and he’d stared at the front page of Google for almost half an hour before closing the tab in defeat.

There’s nothing he can do to find Mat, not without something that isn’t a first name that’s more likely than not a nickname.

His mom calls him down for dinner and he looks out the kitchen window at the darkening sky as every talks over his head and wonders if he can justify going out tonight, just… driving around a little.

He sighs, shoves another piece of broccoli in his mouth and chews moodily. He doesn’t know anything about Mat and it kind of _hurts_ , not understanding just… anything about him. What he’s doing so far out on the highway asking for rides, how he’d managed to slip out of Porter’s car without making a sound. Not even a damn full name.

He shoves back from the table, carries his dishes to the sink and then heads back to his room. There’s another tune playing in his head, something promising.

He’s not sure Mat’s going to be out tonight anyway.

\--

The next night Porter leaves right at ten, right when he’s supposed to, locks the door behind him dutifully. It’s barely dark, the sky a deep orange right where it’s touching the trees. Porter eyes it wearily as he crosses to his car.

The music hadn’t been easy this time but he’d pounded out something workable. Everything from the break is workable but he feels like it’s just not good _enough_. He can do better; he knows he can.

He sighs and climbs into his car and spends a moment leaning his head back to stare blankly up at the ceiling.

He’s not surprised that Mat’s not by the side of the highway but he looks anyway.

\--

The next night is stormy, one of the flashy summer storms more wind and lightning than rain. The trees are roaring when Porter starts his way back, lightning splitting the sky periodically. There’s a few drops hitting his windshield as he turns into the highway, not enough to justify the wipers but enough to make him squint as he peers through the windshield.

He almost misses the little figured, hunched into itself under the streetlight except its extended arm.

He pulls to a stop haphazardly before he’s even sure it’s Mat but then the figure is stepping up to the window and Porter recognizes the nose, the shaggy hair. He doesn’t open the window, just gestures around, and Mat nods and trots around the car to the passenger side. He’s an indistinct shape, hoodie flapping around him in the wind.

When he climbs inside he doesn’t look too wet. Porter wonders how long he’d been out on the highway because it isn’t as late as it had been before but it’s stormy and dark and Porter hasn’t passed any traffic in a long while.

“Hey,” he says and starts the car. Mat nods, shuffles his bag between his feet.

Porter pulls into the road. It takes a little more focus to steer than normal and so he doesn’t speak until they’re speeding up down the highway. The trees roaring are the loudest thing.

“Chapel Hill?” Porter asks.

“Yeah, thanks,” Mat says. He sounds a little more hoarse than Porter remembers and he glances over, concerned. A flash of lightning lights him up in cold light and Porter isn’t sure but he looks a little paler too.

“Rough weather,” Porter observes weakly.

Mat just nods. Porter struggles for a while, maybe a kilometer of road. He wants to say something, wants to ask Mat so many things. He wants to mention his music, selfishly. He wants to ask what Mat’s fucking _thinking_ , being out in weather like this.

Through the windshield lightning flashes again.

“So where are you from?” Porter settles on, faux-casual.

There's silence from the passenger side and Porter glances over and then swears, pulls the car into a messy skidding stop that throws him into the window in a burst of bright pain. Then he's scrambling out the door, spinning to look back down the highway the way he'd come.

The passenger seat had been empty, dusty, like Mat had never been there at all.

The highway is deserted. The streetlights are bare circles with black shadows whipping in the wind and he stares at them, at the pavement. Lightning flashes, thunder roaring on its heels, in the brilliant light Porter sees there’s nobody for as far down the road as he can see.

He'd been doing something over sixty, too fast for Mat to just get back up again if he'd jumped out. And Porter hadn't heard a sound, hadn't seen the door open from the corner of his eye, there'd been _nothing_ in the rearview mirror.

Porter sits down heavily on the asphalt. It's wet under his palms, cooler than the chill night air.

Mat had... disappeared.

He hadn't jumped from Porter's car.

Porter stares blindly back down the highway and doesn't understand.

\--

He calls in the next day and says he’s going to be missing the studio time.

The hours before sunset he spends pacing and staring out the window, thoughts spinning in place, going nowhere. He doesn’t understand anything. Doesn’t know what to make of it, doesn’t know which of the hundred implausible theories could explain anything about this. It’s almost a little bit nauseating, really, the wild tumble.

He picks at dinner, mumbles something he’s not sure is coherent when his mom asks him a question he doesn’t pay attention to. He thinks probably she’s concerned but he can’t spare the energy to care. There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just… preoccupied.

Mat.

“What the fuck,” he mumbles to himself.

When the sun finally goes down he sneaks out the door, unwilling to explain what he’s doing to his parents, and climbs into the car. For a long time he just stays there, rolls a pen across the floor with his toe, stares out at the sunset and the encroaching dark.

When the clock hits eleven he starts the car and nearly runs the curb reversing into the street.

It takes him forty minutes to hit the studio and then he turns around because he’s not _sure_ what’s going on but he knows the circumstances of how he’d seen Mat before and it seems logical that the closer this is to that the more likely…

Porter doesn’t finish the thought. He doesn’t know what he believes, doesn’t believe he thinks _anything_. He’s just… doing.

There’s a figure under a streetlight and Porter’s not sure if it’s the same streetlight but he’s got the sneaking suspicion it is.

He pulls to a stop. Mat steps up to the window and Porter stares at him for a long moment before he rolls down the window. He’s almost smiling, the perpetual melancholy a little faded from his face. He looks friendly.

He looks so human. So alive. So…

Porter still doesn’t know what to think.

“Get in,” he says and Mat nods, the friendliness fading a little into something Porter doesn’t have a chance to decipher before he’s stepping away, around the front of the car for the passenger door.

He climbs in silently. Settles his bag between his feet. It occurs to Porter to wonder what’s inside. He can’t look away, can’t stop staring.

“Hi,” Mat says at last when all Porter does is stare at him. His expression is distant.

Porter doesn’t reply for a long while.

“Mat,” he says at last and stops. Nothing is lining up in his head.

Mat doesn’t answer anyway. 

“You disappeared from my car,” Porter says at last. Mat doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move at all. “I thought you just… tucked and rolled or some shit but…”

Mat shrugs, once. It’s a sharp movement, abrupt and final.

“You’re…” Porter begins and doesn’t know how to continue.

Mat quirks a tiny little smile. It’s self-deprecating, a little bit unkind. He doesn’t look distinct in the shadows, features too sharp, an overexposed picture of himself.

“Dead,” he supplies, and his whispery voice is just a little acidic.

Porter stares at him for a while. At Mat, at… he doesn’t know. He looks too solid to be a ghost but there’s something about the shift of shadows on his face and the way the streetlight doesn’t illuminate so much as fade him out. Something unreal.

“What happened?” Porter asks softly and Mat sighs.

The sound is still soft. Or maybe not soft, maybe it’s far away, like Mat’s a few yards away instead of inches. A little hoarse. A little exhausted.

“A party,” Mat says. “I got a ride.”

Porter swallows. It’s loud in the silence.

Mat’s not looking at him. He’s looking out the window. Porter’s terrified to look away.

“Chapel Hill?” he asks.

Mat turns to look at him at last. His eyes are dark and sad and glittering.

“Porter,” he says after a moment and his voice sounds the loudest Porter’s ever heard it, the closest, the whisper almost gone from it. It sounds _real_.

Porter doesn’t blink and doesn’t look away.

“Yeah, please,” Mat says at last and turns away again, looks out the windshield.

Porter starts the engine without looking, keeps his eyes on Mat as well as he can. When he finally looks away to put the car into drive it’s with his heart in his throat and when he’s on the highway and the road is thrumming under him he glances over expecting there to be an empty seat.

Mat shifts, lifts a hand to scrub dark, scruffy hair from his eyes.

Porter turns back to the road. His heart is still in his throat. It aches.

“What’s in Chapel Hill?” he asks at last, when the silence has grown and sunk and settled into a breathing space around them. Mat doesn’t look at him but he smiles a little bit and it lights him up in a way that makes the ache in Porter’s throat even worse.

“My parents,” Mat says and scuffs his foot against an empty McDonald’s cup. It rolls around on the carpet.

Porter wonders if it’s real, if the cup is really moving, and dismisses the thought again when he turns into Chapel Hill. Mat doesn’t direct him; he doesn’t need to. Porter knows the way. Briefly he considers stalling, considers taking a wrong turn or just keeping driving, refusing to pull onto the road he knows Mat wants to get to. He dismisses the thought right away; it just isn’t… right.

He wishes Mat would say something. He can’t imagine what he’d say.

Mat clears his throat when they’re most of the way through the familiar commercial stretch, the signs Porter’s almost starting to recognize now out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t know that he likes Chapel Hill much anymore.

“Good luck on your music,” Mat says as they turn into the dark, deserted neighborhood and Porter pulls to a stop way too fast, a little crooked in the middle of the street.

Mat’s looking at him. His hand’s on his bag and his face is tucked just a little bit into his hoodie, just enough to obscure his features. His eyes glitter. He looks… sad.

“Will I see you again?” Porter asks at last and the ache in his throat is threatening to spill over in his eyes. They burn. Everything hurts. Mat looks at him for a long while, silent and still and sad, and Porter knows.

Mat doesn’t say anything and as he reaches for the door handle Porter hauls in a breath, the air too heavy for his lungs. There’s something awful and resigned as Mat grabs his bag from the floor, as he stiffly climbs out of the seat. For a moment he’s hovering in the open door, bent at an awkward angle to look back inside.

He’s bleached again in the light of a nearby streetlight, absent depth and color and texture. It’s difficult to make out anything but impressions, his face alien. Even like that he still looks so…

Porter aches.

“Thanks for the ride,” Mat says at last.

“No problem,” Porter manages around the thickness in his throat.

Mat closes the door and Porter’s not sure if he blinks or not but a moment later the street’s empty. Deserted, bare circles of lit pavement and oceans of dark.

He starts the car and drives two streets over, stops again. Punches the steering wheel. Cries until his eyes burn and the sky is starting to purple a little bit off to the east.


End file.
